Profile

Stream

Office 365: The Microsoft Garage incubator has released a new email application called Send. I don't think it's needed because I can't work out what problem it solves and how it might be better (in any way) to other solutions such as WhatsApp or SMS. See what you think!http://windowsitpro.com/blog/microsoft-garage-send-app#Office365﻿

I confess to being totally underwhelmed at the prospect of being able to use “Send”, the new email application from the Microsoft Garage that is “built specifically for those brief, snappy communications.” Apparently it’s not good enough to have Outlook on mobile devices when you just want to send a line or so to update a single user about some news. Old-fashioned SMS won’t do either, nor will WhatsApp or even an IM application.

Office 365: The Office 365 Import Service started out by ingesting PSTs into mailboxes. Now it can handle packages for SharePoint sites, lists, and libraries and file shares - and Microsoft is partnering with ISVs to allow them to create ingestible packages for Twitter, Facebook, Jabber, BlackBerry IM, and other data sources. All can be uploaded to Azure and then processed into Office 365 and so become indexed and available for compliance purposes. Cheap storage allows Microsoft to make Office 365 the gathering point of data (but never the dumping point) http://windowsitpro.com/blog/Office-365-import-service-ingests-everything#Office365﻿

You’re probably well aware of the Office 365 Import Service and the way that it can import PSTs to mailboxes that are provided either on drives shipped to a Microsoft datacenter or uploaded over the network. Well, as it turns out, PSTs are just the first type of data to be ingested and brought into Office 365 by the Import Service.

In my last post I covered the process that you can use to secure an on-premises Exchange mailbox after an employee is fired from ;the organization. The situation is different when the mailbox is in the cloud because some of the same conditions and levers do not exist for administrators inside Office 365. Thus, a slightly different approach is necessary.

Office 365: Reflecting again on the dynamic nature of functionality within Office 365, here's why the combination of pressure of available space within OWA's navigation bar, the need to support Office 365 Groups, and the effectiveness of the Clutter feature came together to kill off "People View". http://windowsitpro.com/blog/Clutter-Killed-People-View-Office365#Office365 ﻿

The harsh reality of an aspect of software development for cloud services is evident in the way Microsoft cut the People View feature from Outlook Web App (OWA) in Office 365. Introduced to First Release tenants in August 2014 and then generally in November 2014, Microsoft took the decision to withdraw People View from March 30, 2015. That process completed in May 2015 and no Office 365 tenant now has access to People View.

Microsoft didn't give away too many details when the Exchange development team blogged about their "bottomless" archive (which conjures up pictures of a bottomless pit), so it was time to investigate a tad. And as it turns out, they've created a way to chain together individual mailboxes to form an archive set. And even more interestingly, it looks like they might be able to do the same thing for primary mailboxes.

Exchange 2016: Microsoft has released a preview build of Exchange 2016 to allow on-premises administrators to test the new version well before its formal release, probably in October 2015. Lots of technology transfer from the cloud, but some would hold that Exchange 2016 is no more than a service pack upgrade for Exchange 2013.http://windowsitpro.com/blog/exchange-2016-preview-now-available#ExchangeServer﻿

Microsoft has made a preview version of Exchange 2016 available for download. The code is on track for final release later on this year as part of the Wave 16 set of Office server applications, probably in the late October timeframe, which would match the release cadence for the last few versions.

Office 365: At the worldwide partner conference, Microsoft revealed plans for a new E5 Office 365 plan. They have included some interesting functionality along with some features that were already released or available in other plans, but Microsoft has not revealed how much E5 will cost when it replaces the existing E4 plan. I wish Delve Analytics was available in E3... http://windowsitpro.com/blog/microsoft-announces-E5-Plan-Office365#Office365﻿

Office 365 is in a state of constant evolution, so it’s not at all surprising that Microsoft would attempt to capture some of that work in a new plan (literally, a menu of options sold to customers). At this week’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Orlando, we got the news that the old E4 plan has been replaced as the “premium Office 365 Enterprise Suite” by E5.

For whatever reason, the news that Google had upgraded Gmail’s experimental “Undo Send feature from beta to become a full-blown feature available to all caused quite a fuss last week. The feature has been around since 2009, when it first revealed by Google Labs. It’s a mystery why such a useful option took six years to make the transition.

Office 365: Some people hate to live on the bleeding edge and never install new software before it is fully baked (preferably after millions of others have installed it and at least one service pack has appeared). That attitude is viable in the on-premises world but perhaps less so in the cloud. As it turns out, staying on the Office 365 bleeding edge has some value... http://windowsitpro.com/blog/value-first-release-office-365-tenants#Office365﻿

For a protocol that doesn't get a whole lot of loving, it's amazing how Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) keeps on serving tens of millions of email clients daily. For everyone using one of the new-fangled REST-type APIs or the ex-Acompli Outlook clients, there's probably a hundred EAS clients running to fetch email from Exchange on-premises and Exchange Online. The news is that Microsoft has released EAS version 16 and that this version is now being rol...